OE vs AOE

12 Mar OE vs AOE

Not to be outdone in making a contribution to the exponential growth of anagrams in written communication on the web… OE, i.e. Open Enrollment vs AOE, i.e. After Open Enrollment. For all those familiar with the health insurance lead and pay per call verticals, these are excruciatingly familiar terms. But as a newcomer, who would have ever imagined the driving the car off the cliff that occurs immediately in the health insurance market in January following OE. Bright sun/pitch dark, giant/midget, rich/penniless and the extreme descriptions can go on and on. It’s like waking up in an alternate reality!

In November and December, the phone lines were jammed, publishers were given concurrency caps and potential applicants make policy buying decisions on one call that often didn’t last over 20 minutes. Then the curtain came down and it was Act 2, AOE… Day was night. Almost no one called and virtually no one wanted to actually buy a policy even though they had extended calls deep diving into all sorts of policy questions. “I’ll be back in touch if I’m interested in going further” was the favorite getting off the phone line.

What happened? That’s easy… the incentive to buy had gone away. OE had enough carrots that it was clearly obvious that to buy during OE made a lot of sense. Once the incentives were removed….not so clear. In fact, a lot more like life insurance where, if I’m not dying today, I’ll just wait until tomorrow to get a policy…why pay for an extra day?

For all of us who are in the health insurance vertical, there is a lesson to be learned here …DIVERSIFY. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket and don’t think it will be Christmas forever. AOE can be like a splash of cold water in one’s face — use it as a wakeup call. Get into other markets with more months in and out stability or with offsetting highs and lows.

The lesson here is BASIC RULE 1: to be a viable internet marketer, be in at least 2 markets, preferably 3+!!